Gates’s Comments on NATO’s Afghan Force Anger Dutch

THE HAGUE (Agence France-Presse / New York Times) — The Dutch government has summoned the American ambassador here to explain comments by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who criticized NATO forces in southern Afghanistan in a news report published Wednesday.

Mr. Gates told The Los Angeles Times that international troops deployed in the south — mainly from Britain, Canada and the Netherlands — were not properly trained to fight an insurgency.

“I’m worried we have some military forces that don’t know how to do counterinsurgency operations,” Mr. Gates told The Los Angeles Times. “Most of the European forces, NATO forces, are not trained in counterinsurgency.”

The Dutch defense secretary, Eimert van Middelkoop, told reporters that Dutch troops had acted with experience and professionalism and said, “We do not recognize ourselves in the image conjured” by Mr. Gates.

Nearly 1,665 Dutch soldiers are deployed in Oruzgan Province in southern Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

Speaking from Oruzgan, the contingent’s commander, Col. Nico Geerts, also criticized Mr. Gates’s comments in a radio interview, saying Dutch soldiers were “doing an excellent job.”

In Washington, a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, confirmed that the ambassador was called in to clarify Mr. Gates’s remarks.

Mr. McCormack said Mr. Gates “was not directing his comments at any one country in particular, but at the alliance as a whole, which includes us.”

The ambassador also acknowledged the contribution of the Dutch armed forces and the “sacrifices” of the Dutch people in sending troops to Afghanistan, Mr. McCormack said.

Mr. McCormack said the meeting with the ambassador was not a “finger wagging” session. “It was the defense minister looking for a clarification of the comments,” he said.

Mr. Gates made his remarks just after the Bush administration decided to send 3,200 more marines to Afghanistan, as NATO allies struggle to provide 7,500 more troops requested by commanders on the ground.

The commanders, backed by the United States, have regularly called for more troops and equipment in their fight against a resilient Taliban. The force grew to about 42,000 in December 2007 from around 33,000 in January 2007.

NATO is engaged in its most ambitious mission yet, trying to spread the rule of President Hamid Karzai’s weak central government into more lawless parts of Afghanistan. But the international forces have struggled to defeat the insurgency, particularly in the south near the mountainous border with Pakistan.

NATO’s secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, a Dutchman, also defended allied troops fighting the Taliban-led insurgency after Mr. Gates’s criticism, saying he had “the greatest respect for what the allies are doing in the west, the north, the east and the south.”

Fourteen Dutch soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, either accidentally or in combat.